Angels
by Kage
Summary: Sephiroth's wandering spirit is lost in the Lifestream with little memory of his past life. But he is quickly found by a mysterious angel...an angel with emerald green eyes...


Angels  
  
  
Sephiroth blinked slowly and uncurled from his fetal position, watching in a dully fascinated way as strands of his long, platinum silver hair floated in his emerald eyes. He opened his eyes further and took in his surroundings, seeing only endless miles of green, part liquid, part mist, foaming around him as he floated in the midst of it dazedly. A flash of blinding white light came from directly in front of him, bringing with it a quick flashback of a previous scene. He whimpered involuntarily with the memory and helplessly covered his face with his bare arms, as if he could shield himself from whatever was coming.   
  
When nothing happened, Sephiroth lowered his arms and stared at the person in front of him with a mixture of shock and fear. He backpedaled away as the girl stepped closer to him, a faint, almost condescending smile on her curved lips. She tilted her head slightly to her right and openly mocked him with her jade green eyes, brown bangs swinging in her face and twisting about like the snakes on the mythical Medusa's head.  
  
"Wh-who are you?" Sephiroth asked, swallowing convulsively as the stranger purposely took a stride forward, her smile widening as he cringed away. "G-go away!"  
  
"Ah, you're but a child, Sephiroth," the girl whispered teasingly, moving back and placing her hands behind her back and leaning over as he crouched down on the figurative ground. "What happened to you, murderer?"  
  
"I d-don't know what you're talking about," Sephiroth stammered, cursing himself as his voice seemed to squeak like a door hinge that had lacked maintenance for years.   
  
"I'm..." the girl paused before she finished her sentence that would identify herself. "No, I don't think I'll tell you just yet. Do you remember anything at all, Sephiroth?"  
  
"Remember?" Sephiroth swallowed hard. He couldn't even remember that flash that had sent him an image of his past. "N-not really. I know I'm...Sephiroth. I remember someone calling me that all the time...while I lived in a big, dark, gray place..."  
  
"That would be the Shinra Headquarters, I think." The girl smiled again, eyes laughing down at him, but the mocking look faded when she saw the frank bewilderment on Sephiroth's face. "So you really don't remember, do you."  
  
It was a statement, not a question. Sephiroth shook his head anyway, not knowing what else to do.  
  
The girl knelt on the "ground" next to him where he cowered, fear of this mysterious lady welling in his soul. Why was he so afraid of her? Did she know something about him...that he didn't?  
  
"So, Sephiroth. Do you remember anything else?"  
  
Sephiroth drew his knees to his chin, hunching over. "A man...two men...I called one master...and the other one was...was..."  
  
"Master would be Hojo, I suppose. Your father."  
  
"Father?" Sephiroth drew the word over his tongue, twisting it around carefully. "I don't remember ever using that word before."  
  
"Probably not. Hojo wouldn't allow you to, I'd bet. Go on. Who was the other man?" the girl prodded.  
  
"He had...blonde hair. Yellow. Like gold. And blue eyes...deep blue...His hair was...strange...all spiky." Sephiroth ran a hand through his own hair, twisting the long silver lengths in his fingers. "And a sword...a big, big sword..." He suddenly remembered something; those same blue eyes, burning with hatred, framed by spiked golden hair, rushing towards him with that same sword in his hands. The man slashed him before he could react...pain...God, the pain...and blood, an unbelievably pure crimson red, running down his face and into his eyes...  
  
"He killed me," Sephiroth mumbled. "He killed me."  
  
She laughed, low and chuckling. "Damn right he did, child. Are you getting your memories back yet?"  
  
Sephiroth squeezed his eyes shut, clasping his hands over his ears to try and filter out the girl's taunting voice. Yes, he was getting his memories back...but they were not something that he wanted...  
  
Come to me, my son, a voice from the past that sounded like nails scraping over slate hissed into his mind. Come to me...  
  
"M-m-mother...?" Sephiroth whispered.   
  
"So you remember your mother at least," the girl snorted cynically. "Of course you would."  
  
"N-no...she's...not my...mother..."  
  
The girl obviously almost missed his choked statement. She paused and stared at him in surprise. "What do you mean, she's not your mother?"  
  
"She's not my mother," Sephiroth repeated forcefully. "She can't be...no one can be that...that..."  
  
"Manipulating?" the girl suggested candidly.   
  
"Ma-ni-pu-la-ting." Sephiroth tried the word out. It sounded right, fitting the shadow of the monstrosity that lurked in his mind like a new glove. "Manipulating. Yes. She manipulated me."   
  
"Manipulated you, huh?" the girl cocked her head to one side, searching his face with her green eyes. "So everything you did was because she told you to?"  
  
"Ma-ni-pu-la-ting," Sephiroth repeated, playing with the word again. "I am sure that that is so. She was a...a..."  
  
"Puppeteer?" the girl asked while he trailed off, trying out words from the huge expanse of vocabulary that was slowly coming back to him. "She played with you? She used you to meet her own ends?"  
  
"True. She used me. I used her. I thought I was helping her, and she knew that, so she let me use her physical aspect as traps and obstacles. But she...she had a different thought. She used me to get her dirty work done. Like...the killing..." Sephiroth stopped again, piecing together his memory like a long fragmented and lost jigsaw puzzle. "That town...Nib...Nibelheim? And...things that got in my-no, her-path to success. President Shinra. Nameless people without faces. And...and...a girl..." Sephiroth closed his eyes again, envisioning the face in his mind, its image so sharp and clear it was if he were talking to her at that very moment. "Long, brown hair and big green eyes. She was smiling all the time...she was even smiling when I...killed her. But she wasn't smiling out of happiness. It was...pity..." His eyes flew open and he stared straight at the girl, finally recognizing her. "Aeris."  
  
"Yes?" Aeris smiled again, not the harsh, revenge-lusting smile she wore before, but her normal, sweet, caring smile. "The last Ancient. That is who I am."  
  
Now Sephiroth knew why he was so scared of her. She never feared me...not even when I took away her life...She never was afraid...  
  
And that scared the man more than anything else could.  
  
"You're in the Lifestream, Sephiroth." Aeris curled her legs underneath her as she spoke. "You're finally dead."  
  
"Dead..." Sephiroth swung his head back on his neck and stared straight up, watching the greenness of the Lifestream slide about like sheets of misty silk. "What about M...Jenova?"  
  
"She's dead, too." Aeris lost her smile for a bare moment. "But she's not here. The Planet wouldn't let her stay here. She does not belong to the Planet."  
  
"That's...good," Sephiroth said, surprising himself. All his life he had lived to obey the whim of this alien he called his Mother, and now he didn't care at all about her. The urge that had always been there that told him what to do and how to do it was gone, replaced by a strangely empty feeling-as if there was a void in his heart. "Then why did the Planet allow me to stay?"  
  
"Because you are the Planet's child," Aeris answered simply. "Even though you tried to destroy it."  
  
"And Meteor...?"  
  
"Meteor was destroyed by Holy and Lifestream energy. Midgar is in ruins, but the rest of the villages and lands are pretty much intact. Cloud and the others..." Aeris sighed. "I don't know what happened to them. But they have to be alive somewhere..."  
  
Sephiroth stroked the air in front of him, watching as the Lifestream curled around his fingers like elusive emerald smoke. "What happens now, Ancient?"  
  
"That's your choice, Sephiroth." Aeris flicked a lock of chestnut hair over her shoulder. "That's your choice."   
  
Sephiroth smiled slowly. "Free. I'm really free..."  
  
"For as long as you want to be."  
  
I'm free for as long as I want to be...and I will never again be someone's puppet...  
  
"Aeris," he said abruptly, staring down at his hands. "I...have a question."  
  
"Then ask it, Sephiroth," she replied gently. "I am here to answer your thoughts and guide you for as long as you wish it."  
  
Sephiroth finally turned his face towards Aeris and met her eyes with his, green alighting with green and both glowing with the inner pulse of life.   
  
"Then will you teach me, Aeris? Will you teach me...how to live for myself?"  
  
Aeris smiled, a twitching of her mouth that she hid underneath a curtain of hair that fell forward as she nodded in agreement.  
  
"Of course, Sephiroth. I shall teach you for as long as it is required...and for as long as you need me."  
  
Sephiroth relaxed slowly, his mind losing the last bit of fog and clearing into ready lucidity.  
  
"Thank you..."  
  
  
Fin  
  
Notes:   
  
This was one big random piece of work. I don't really know what brought it up when I wrote it. I was conscious, however, of the fact that it's been about...five months or so since I've last submitted to FanFiction.net. Thusly feeling deprived, I went digging around my fanfiction archives and blew the dust off of this piece. It's poorly written, confusing, and makes one of the best villains in Final Fantasy history look like a whining, crying idiot. It also casts a pretty evil light on Aeris in the beginning...something I rather liked, simply because I have this little...dislike for Aeris Gainsborough. She was a nice enough character and it was a bit of a shock when she died the first time around for me, but I had no regrets in losing her. She was a very low level when she died for me, and dragging her around the Temple of the Ancients was pure hell-she kept dying when I needed her against Demon's Gate. But for some reason, I had this idea to cast Sephiroth and Aeris together as a couple...say it's the bangs, the green eyes, or the diverseness in purposes and personalities, but for some reason they just seem to go together. Of course, Sephiroth is about fifty billion times better than Aeris in my honest, personal opinion, but still...  
  
Kagé  
  
Last modified: May 6, 2001   



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